Daily Holidays - December 19

[femmocrat]

4. Remembering Edith Piaf on her 100th birthday:

http://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/edith-piaf.html

While celebrations for Piaf’s centenary have been low key this December, France – and the Belleville neighbourhood of Paris in particular – honoured her memory following the 50th anniversary of her death in October 2013. If Piaf is a little out of fashion with today’s jeunesse dorée then you suspect that could all change at any moment with, say, a high-profile cover version or a new motion picture. To paraphrase an old footballing cliche, fashion is temporary, class is permanent. Her brand of torch songs and cabaret showtunes might seem antediluvian to some, but a voice with such power to convey emotion never dates. What’s more, she led a life so bohemian and wild that she makes the Jim Morrison – buried, like her, on Père Lachaise cemetery – look like a calculable conformist who got a bit carried away on his gap year. Avert your ears and Piaf’s life was a punk opera decades before the genre exploded.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/dec/18/edith-piaf-at-100-the-singer-who-defined-parisian-courage